Home - Vijee Venkatraman

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Just Keeping Swimming

When a senior male scientist claimed the data from sawfish she’d tagged, Jasmin Graham –an early career shark researcher in Florida– felt powerless. It was not one individual’s behavior but the failure of the larger scientific community to take appropriate action was frustrating. Dejected, Graham quit graduate school....

I am a graduate of the Science Journalism program at Boston University.

I chase stories on all topics of interest. I go where the reporting takes me. This website is a digital portfolio of my articles and essays. I also translate short stories from Tamil, which is my first language or mother tongue.

FOOD & TRAVEL

A Film Buff in Madurai

LION OF THE DESERT, Anthony Quinn as Omar Mukhtar (holding child), 1981, © United Film Distribution We had reached the theater late that day. A temple procession on the main road made it impossible for our scooter to pass. Daring shortcuts brought us to the...

The Power of Language

At the pediatrician’s clinic, a nurse told Viorica Marian, who is a native speaker of Romanian, to use only English with her American-born daughter. Speaking another language would “confuse” the child and hurt her long-term, the woman had said. This was a good decade ago....

The Thousand Pillared Hall

Big grownups are all bad. ShenbagaKuzhalvaimozhi, the little girl with the long name, has come to this grand conclusion before she arrives at the Hall of Thousand Pillars. This is one place within the temple compound with hardly any people, big or little. The hall...